When we are considering a happy life,
you cannot answer me as though after a division of the house, "this view
has most supporters;" because for that very reason it is the worse of the
two: matters do not stand so well with mankind that the majority should prefer
the better course. The more people do a thing, the worse it is likely to be.
Let us therefore inquire, not what is
most commonly done, but what is best for us to do, and what will establish us
in the possession of undying happiness, not what is approved of by the vulgar,
the worst possible exponents of truth.
By "the vulgar" I mean both
those who wear woolen cloaks and those who wear crowns; for I do not regard the
color of the clothes with which they are covered. I do not trust my eyes to
tell me what a man is: I have a better and more trustworthy light by which I
can distinguish what is true from what is false. Let the mind find out what is
good for the mind.
If a man ever allows his mind some
breathing space and has leisure for communing with himself, what truths he will
confess to himself, after having been put to the torture by his own self! . . .
—Seneca
the Younger, On the happy life,
Chapter 2 (tr Stewart)
It is
too easy to confuse what is popular with what is right, because we are quickly
carried away with impressions, because it requires far less effort to conform
than to judge for oneself, and because there is a lazy comfort in in the
security of the group.
I have
observed that a faction will often define itself even more by a hatred of the
opposition than a love of its own platform, and how much there can be a certain
malicious and exclusive glee in being part of “us” rather than part of “them”.
I was
fortunate enough to only spend a short time of my life tempted by the mentality
of the herd, first in matters of politics, and then in matters of religion. The
appeal quickly faded, because it all seemed more like acting in a play than
about living a life. I learned quickly that herd loyalty is far more emotional
than it is rational, and that the perspectives could change at a moment’s
notice, with the whims of fashion and the empty promises of demagogues.
Standing
back from the quarrels, one could see that the different sides were all selling
much the same pabulum, masked in slightly different flavors. The obedience to
the tribe had silenced a commitment to shared humanity.
The
vulgarity Seneca describes can be seen anywhere and everywhere, and it is
hardly defined by class or status. I have listened to oil workers in Oklahoma
worship their flags and guns just as often as I have listened to suburban
professionals in Boston exclude anyone who is not as properly diverse as they believe
themselves to be. What makes such displays vulgar is the exercise of ignorance
and vanity clothed in the appearance of enlightenment.
I am
best served to remember that a man is not defined by how he would wish to
appear to me, but by the merit of what he truly thinks and of what he actually does.
If I can peel away all the images and trappings, if I can look beneath the manipulations
and the hypocrisy, I will be left with nothing but the identity of my own human
nature, of a being ruled by reflection and understanding, and how that is
ordered to the Nature of all other things. Anything beyond this becomes a diversion.
If I do
not allow myself to be distracted by the confusion of all the accidents, by
status, possessions, or popularity, I can come to perceive the essence, the
identity of a being that exists solely to live by the knowledge of what is true
and the love of what is good. The rest must fall away, revealing only that
purity, which is at the very root of our freedom and happiness.
Written in 8/2012
Image: Robert Cruickshank, Whigs and Tories (1832)
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